1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a medical and surgical instrument cleaning and disinfecting device.
2. The Prior Art
Practitioners, whether surgeons, dental surgeons or physicians, use instruments that cannot always be perfectly sterilized or disinfected between two successive operations.
This is particularly the case of handpieces, counterangles, ultrasound apparatus and three-way vaporizers constantly used by dental surgeons.
Actually, since these instruments are solidly connected to the care console, it is not possible to remove them to perform a complete cleaning between two successive operations.
These instruments can undergo considerable contamination from microbes or viruses contained in gangrenous teeth, on the outside of teeth with dental plaque, in the saliva or blood. These microbes or viruses therefore can be sprayed, under the action of the turbine in the patient's mouth, onto the basic instrument itself, onto the mirror, tongue retractor or also on the probe the practitioner uses to protect the integument from untimely drilling cuts. Besides the risk of contamination of one patient by another, there are considerable contamination risks of medical personnel.
These contaminations have particularly serious consequences in the case of diseases that are difficult to treat such as hepatitis B or for which a treatment is not yet available such as AIDS.